


Crimson

by ecotone



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Crimson Days, F/F, Femslash February 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 09:39:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13633656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecotone/pseuds/ecotone
Summary: Eriana doesn't think about Pahanin shoving her and Wei together right before Crimson Days until much, much later.





	Crimson

“Come on,” Omar says. Behind him Sai nods approvingly, sneaks in a quiet grin hidden just underneath his shoulders. When Eriana-3 moves closer Sai taps the back of her hand, the same not-quite-Morse that she uses as information and reassurance in the Crucible or in some tunnel ten miles beneath the earth. 

“The Hunters’ Bar,” Eriana says, looking up, jaw-lights glowing an amused yellow-orange. 

“Not just Hunters,” Omar says, bringing his hood down; the street lights color his face blue like the Awoken half-hanging out of the bar’s entrance. Sai makes her way through the dim doorway, bringing Eriana through with her. Omar follows with a sigh loud enough so their retreating backs can hear. 

The Bar is open to everyone in the Tower, Eriana knows, but its reputation as Hunters’ grounds has preceded it for almost as long as the City’s existence. Half the Hunters in the Tower are gone on reconnaissance, though, and the other half have been coming and going for the past four weeks. The dull roar of the bar, audible from the Cook’s Block on most holidays, had been shifting in and out with its rowdiest base since. 

Inside is almost as dark as the nighttime just outside the doorway, with only hanging lights above the bar and the booths lining the walls. Most of the activity not at the bar is taking place among the dim edges of the room, small crowds gathered around dartboards and a ragged pool table, its sides decorated with peeling stickers showing weapon manufacturers and colorful Ghost shells. 

Eriana makes for a booth, but Sai pushes the three of them towards the bar, nets three different drinks from one of the Exos on staff with a nod and a grin and forty-one credits. Sai climbs onto a barstool, Omar making himself comfortable on the one beside hers. 

There’s a louder-than-usual commotion at the entrance while Eriana’s situating her robes so that she won’t trip over them when she stands. None of the surrounding Hunters tense, and the noise dies off quickly, so she figures there’s no danger stronger than a bar fight. 

The remaining noise resolves itself in a few more seconds as loud talking, laughter bubbling through the air and rattling around Eriana’s sensors like marbles in a tin can. 

She sees Pahanin first, the bright blue of his cloak as he weaves through the crowding Sparks that are too young for reconnaissance but old enough to have heard the legends. They don’t have to be _that_ old for it, anyways, she thinks- word travels fast now that the whole of humanity is within gossiping distance. 

Pahanin dives towards the bar, stepping one-two as he swirls to avoid catching cloaks and the sharp edges of gauntlets and boot-knives. Eriana catches his hand grabbing tightly to someone’s wrist, a Titan barrelling through after him, creating space for herself from what looks like size and sheer willpower alone. Pahanin turns against the line of barstools, starts making his way down to Eriana’s. 

Maybe he’s looking for Omar, she thinks, allowing herself the hope as she takes a sip of whatever Sai had thought appropriate for her. Or Sai. They’ve played poker together, sometimes, and Pahanin’s still three games behind this quarter- 

“Eriana-3,” Pahanin says, standing right in front of her. “Nice to see you here! You seem more like a Night Owl patron, though.” 

“How’s your scouting going?” She asks, loud enough to be heard, instead of saying anything about her preferred activity for 11:03 PM being asleep in a place not packed with enough noise and Light to pressure-cook a King Baron. 

“Great!” He replies, tilting his head so that she can see a long tear through his hood. “Getting to meet the locals, you know? They didn’t like me. Speaking of,” he adds, too pleased with himself with his introduction, “Meet Wei Ning, the woman who put a hole through a Warsat.” 

Beside her Sai slips away to spectate a game of backwards darts, which will almost certainly end in a trip to the hospital wing. Omar follows, says something that makes Sai smack his arm. 

Eriana looks at Pahanin sideways. Beside him, Wei Ning shifts, waiting for him to finish so she can get a word in, like _hello_ or _sorry._

Pahanin unsheathes his knife, twirls it, pointedly ignores the _No Weapons!_ sign hanging above the bar and the _Seriously!!!_ sign hanging below that. “Anyway, Kabr and I have a patrol to get to- or Wall duty, maybe, I don’t really remember.” He turns to leave, but not before elbowing Wei and grinning, Hunter-sly and Pahanin-subtle. Wei punches him in the ribs for his efforts, her own smile significantly sharper. “Alright, I’m going!” 

Wei turns to the bartender, and Eriana uses the few precious seconds to reevaluate her surroundings. Somewhere behind her, one of the Iron Lords is loudly recounting some story about Walkers and thrown Titans. Pahanin is lingering by the doorway, talking to a steadily-growing crowd of Hunters; behind him, Kabr edges backwards, helmet in his hands. When Pahanin catches her watching he aims a finger-gun at her, winks. 

Wei orders, voice filling up the room even though she’s not yelling, and the rest of the bar gets rowdy. Half of them are still working through the rounds they got a few minutes prior, when Wei and Pahanin had blown through the open door, announced Wei’s latest Crucible streak, and bought liquor for everyone in the place. 

“Sorry for Pahanin,” she says, turning around. “He’s- well, he’s always like that. He’s usually more charming, though. But yeah, I’m Wei.” 

Eriana resists the urge to set herself alight, because there are three dozen people pressing up against the bar and all of them are too close. “Eriana-3,” she says, “though I think Pahanin has told you that. I’ve been on his fireteam a few times. He’s- a character.” 

Wei laughs, brings an elbow down on the table. The silverware drawers on the other side of the bar rattle. 

“He’ll take that as a compliment,” she says, turning to look at Eriana again, her cheek resting against her fist. “Actually, I know you from Crucible gossip. You’ve been all over the Supremacy boards lately! Ikora must be fearing for her title.” 

“It’s good practice,” Eriana replies, wondering if she should deactivate her sensors so that she can look at Wei without actually _looking_ at her. “Lets me learn to Stormtrance more effectively in a place where I can’t get killed by some Dregs.” 

“Oh!” Wei perks up, leaning in closer, hand sliding from her cheek to her neck. “Stormtrance, huh? I was watching some Crucible VODs- not you, don’t worry- and I was actually wondering about a few things.” She lifts her other hand, wrapped in bandages, to gesture at herself. “Strikers are similar, obviously, but we-” she brings her hand down on the bar, not hard enough to break anything, but enough for Eriana’s arm to shake where it’s leaned up against the metal. “We go down all at once, you know? And you don’t. So the question is, what if we didn’t just expend all our energy in one hit? What if we could keep ourselves in Havoc?” 

The question makes Eriana blink, if not for the excitement then the cleverness of it. She’s been answering questions about flame wings and jokes about blinking for years, but never something- interesting? Sincere? So Eriana answers her, and Wei returns with more, offering up her own solutions and ideas and answers to Eriana’s questions. 

When the lights come up at 1:30, Wei groans. She stands to stretch, back popping loud enough to catch Eriana by surprise. The last few Hunters stumble to the door, almost all of the Titans and Warlocks gone ages ago. 

Almost all, Eriana thinks, looking at Wei. She gets off of her own stool carefully, not wanting to embarrass herself now. “Thank you,” she says, straightening her robes. “It was nice meeting you.” 

“You too, Eriana-” Wei says, and then the “-3,” as if she’s not sure whether or not she’s allowed the informality. It’s equal parts charming and disconcerting, coming from such a Titan as Wei. 

“Wei- Ning,” Eriana replies, not sure if she should be the one to drop the stiffness first. So she doesn’t, and she dips her head, keeping her throat a careful yellow that’s probably too warm for a conversation like this. Wei grins in return, brighter than she’s been all night, and Eriana wonders briefly how she’s not a Sunbreaker, with that much warm Light. 

\--

Eriana wakes at 6:15 AM, sprawled on a couch that she doesn’t recognize for a solid forty-five seconds. She finally recognizes it as Sai’s, with one of Vell’s knit blankets draped over the cushions. 

“Laurel,” she says, waiting for her Ghost to bob in front of her, “when do I need to be at the Hangar?” 

“Two hours,” she replies. “And you have a message from Wei Ning. Pahanin gave her your frequency.” 

Eriana forces herself into sleep mode before she can think about it. 

\--

She spends the afternoon walking on air- and, when the Vex structures near the Citadel shimmer and dissipate, occasionally falling through it. 

\--

“Meet me at the Fire in five minutes," Wei says, grinning wide. It’s the same smile that she always gets at the end of a good Crucible match- all teeth. She tilts her head up and the blue-white light above the archway catches her hair, the bridge of her nose, her cheeks. 

Eriana-3 stares at her, manages a nod just before Wei runs off to go fling an arm around Pahanin as he emerges from his ship, back from whatever he was doing in Old Chicago. 

Scavenging for beetles to strap to his arms, probably, she thinks. Then she thinks of saying it to Wei, because now she knows the reaction it’ll get: laughter, the kind that makes tables shake and just-born Guardians startle. 

“No,” she says to Laurel, who’s hovering over her shoulder and radiating smugness. When she turns to lecture the Ghost her optics flick back to the now-empty hallway that leads to the Hangar. 

“It’s been two weeks,” Laurel says, and Eriana makes a noise like harsh static in the back of her throat. Thirty years earlier and she’d already be throwing sparks. “You know-” 

“No,” Eriana says again, flat. She starts her walk to the lower North wing, moving too quickly for her to say she’s not flustered and have it mean anything. The thermal sensors in her hands are overclocking, sending warning bleats into her ears, reminding her of the regulations on Solar Light within Tower bounds as if she wasn’t there when the law passed- as if she had nothing to do with the law passing. Laurel hovers a few feet away, cautious, trying to think of something to say that will be taken as concerned instead of snarky. 

It’s been two weeks of messages flying back and forth, mostly, with Wei on the Wall most hours of the day and Eriana off-planet when she’s not. It’s become routine much faster than Eriana wants to think about. 

The idea makes her stop short by the stairs, which means a scarf-cloaked Hunter nearly barrels into her. “Oh,” they say, any new-Light-bravado dissipating under a flat gaze. “Uh, sorry-” 

“It’s fine,” Eriana says, and Laurel sees the flames pulling at her fingertips and hopes that her charge will not, in fact, scar this poor Spark for their immortal life. “Sorry for running into you.” She turns to face the balcony, slow, takes a few steps so that her legs are barely pushing up against the railing. 

And she jumps, and Laurel sighs, relieved, just as the Hunter lets out a strangled yelp. They look at Laurel helplessly, mouth half-open like they’re trying to ask a question they don’t really want the answer to. 

“Girl trouble,” Laurel says. “Though that one’s enough trouble by herself. You can do that, by the way,” she adds, one of her flanges swinging out to gesture towards the drop. “There’s a clear area so that you don’t hit anything important.” 

“Okay,” the Hunter says, “thanks,” and then tries their best not to run straight to the Hall of Guardians to hide under the Vanguard’s table. Laurel watches them go as she revives Eriana at the edge in a plume of gold Light, one that thankfully doesn’t scorch the floor tile. 

“Better?” She asks. 

“A work in progress,” Eriana says, and looks out at the near-gone sunset. “I won’t torch any Sparks, though.”

“You’d never torch one of them,” Laurel says, confident, as Eriana brushes at her long robes down and makes for the stairs once again. She walks slower, now, boots not slamming against the ground in an attempt to keep them from smouldering. All a Praxic Warlock needs to do is throw herself into the thanatosphere for a few seconds and she’ll come out better than ever and covered in flames. 

“No fire until the Fire,” Laurel reminds her. 

Eriana laughs quietly, hooks a hand in the pocket of her robes. She walks down the stairs and out of the doorway, Laurel trailing behind, the faint buzz of City life growing dimmer and dimmer- they hardly ever come down here, not when the market stalls and Guardians and turret guns are upwards. 

Wei jumps up from the low couch she’s been sitting on once she sees Eriana, giving up any pretense that she wasn’t staring at the doorway watching people come through. She’s smiling, again- not her Crucible-grin, something closer to the one she has when she’s giving pointers to the young Titans struggling to find the line between offense and defense. 

(Laurel debates teasing Eriana about her cataloging after so short a time, the half-staring and watching she’s been doing for three months all catching up to her. It’d probably cause her to jump from the nearest railing again, though, so she ignores it.) 

“Eriana,” she says, no hitch before the -3, no -3 at all. Eriana blinks a few times without shuttering her eyes, processor flickering on-off-on for a solid half-second. Wei grabs one of her forearms, grinning bright. 

“Wei,” Eriana replies. Her throat-lights pulse an orange deep enough that it looks almost red as she allows herself to be led to the couch. 

Wei looks at her again, still smiling, her hold on Eriana’s arm loose but still-present. “I saw your Crucible scores this morning,” she starts, “I forgot to tell you earlier, in the Watch, but they were great- even better than last month's!” 

Eriana tilts her head, lights swinging back into yellow-green as she attempts to keep herself from burning the two of them alive. “Last month?” She asks, careful and teasing all in one. “I’m flattered you were keeping up with my scores before you knew who I was.” 

“Well, I knew _who_ you were,” Wei manages, splaying the fingers of her non-occupied hand outwards. “No one gets the Cormorant unnoticed, you know.” 

“No one lights the Fire Victorious unnoticed, you know,” Eriana returns, tilting her head. Wei laughs at that, head down, her crown of short hair hiding her face. 

“Alright, I guess we’re both famous.” 

The chatter keeps up as the last of the sunset’s orange-red bleeds out in favor of the navy-black night. The Traveler looms above them, like the pre-Golden Age hypotheticals Eriana sees, sometimes- what the moon would look like if it was just a few thousand miles away. 

“We should run duos next week,” Wei suggests eventually, staring, forcefully nonchalant, at some spot between Eriana’s eyes. “It’d be fun, you know?” 

Eriana hums, working out the significance. It could be in case something happens, a solid barrier of time for either of them to sneak away to Mars on some mission; the two of them barely know each other, after all- 

Laurel shoots something into their neural link, any patience she’s kept tonight waning quickly. Eriana processes it and restarts her systems three times in four seconds. 

“Crimson Days,” she says, once number four has proven just as ineffective at containing her odd blend of excitement and fear. “Unless you-” 

“No,” Wei says quickly, “that’s what I meant.” She shifts, and Eriana can feel the nervous Arc stringing along her fingers even as the pressure against her arm lightens. “No one takes the Days seriously so I thought, hey, maybe it’d be a nice time for us to try a run in the Crucible. And maybe- well, you know, it’s Crimson Days. We could go get food.” 

Eriana thinks of Stormtrances and bars and flinging herself off of the Tower. “We should,” she says, and Wei smiles, hand moving down to tug at Eriana’s. 

“We’ll be at the top of the scoreboard before the first day is out,” Wei says, still looking at her. “It’ll be two hundred years from now and our record’ll still be there.” She hooks her free hand around Eriana’s shoulders and squeezes, gets a laugh for her efforts. The Fire burns bright and Eriana flings a bit of her Light into it to keep it burning, even if it doesn’t quite need it. 

“It will?” She asks, her throat nothing but red now, her voice warm. She lays her head on Wei’s shoulder to watch the Fire blaze, the Traveler hanging above it, and the Moon and stars above them all.

**Author's Note:**

> Some Hunter looking at the Doubles scoreboard next week: how are 'E3/WN YEAH!!!!' still number one
> 
> something for femslash feb! i've missed these two. 
> 
> thanks for reading! comments appreciated, as always. <3 <3


End file.
